Abstract
Brown summarises the key higher education reforms of the Coalition Government, notably the near-tripling of the maximum full-time undergraduate tuition fee from £3,375 to £9,000 from 2012. He describes the objectives unpinning the reforms and considers how far they have been achieved to date. He then looks at some of the other potential impacts, including greater stratification of the sector. Brown concludes by looking forward to the post-election policy agenda for higher education. This covers not only funding but also quality, student choice and widening participation and social mobility.
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Notes
For a more detailed account of the reforms and the background to them, see Roger Brown with Helen Carasso, Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK Higher Education (London and New York: Routledge, 2013); Roger Brown, England’s New Market Based System of Higher Education: An Initial Report, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education Research and Occasional Paper Series CSHE.7.13;
and Andrew McGettigan, The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and Higher Education (London: Pluto Press, 2013).
There are now three privately owned universities: BPP University, Regents University and the University of Law. According to the University Alliance, nearly £1bn is now being spent on the education of students at private institutions compared with only £104m as recently as 2011–12. University Alliance, How Do We Ensure Quality in an Expanding Higher Education System? (London: University Alliance, 2014).
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Higher Education. Students at the Heart of the System, Cmnd. 8122 (London: BIS, 2011), Executive Summary, paragraph 3.
London Economics, The Higher Education Fees and Funding Reforms in England. What Is the Value of the RAB Charge on Student Loans for the Treasury to Break-Even? (London: London Economics, 2014).
For the full argument, see Roger Brown, ‘The Myth of Student Choice’, VISTAS Education, Economy and Community — The University of West London Journal, 2:2 (2013), pp. 7–20.
C. Propper, S. Burgess, and D. Gossage, ‘Competition and Quality: Evidence from the NHS Internal Market 1991–9’, The Economic Journal, 118 (2003), pp. 138–170.
BIS, Government Response. Consultations on 1. Students at the Heart of the System 2. A New Fit for Purpose Regulatory Framework for the Higher Education Sector (London: BIS, 2012), p. 4.
According to HEFCE, whereas in 2003–04, 45% of undergraduate entrants were studying part-time, by 2013–14 this had fallen to 27%. Most of this change had occurred in recent years: part-time entrant numbers in 2013–14 were approximately half the number in 2010–11. HEFCE, Pressure from All Sides. Economic and Policy Influences on Part-Time Higher Education (Bristol: HEFCE, 2014).
However we can note that most independent sources consider that child poverty, having declined a little under the previous government, is rising again and will do so even more in the future unless present policies change. See, for example, Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, Understanding the Parental Employment Scenarios Necessary to Meet the 2020 Child Poverty Targets (accessed at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/meeting-the-2020-child-poverty-targets/government/publications/meeting-the-2020-child-poverty-targets, 14 August 2014).
D. Reay, M. David, and S. Ball (eds.), Degrees of Choice: Social Class, Race and Gender in Higher Education (London: Trentham Books, 2005), p. 140.
L. Archer, ‘The ‘Value’ of Higher Education’, in L. Archer, M. Hutchings and A. Ross (eds.), Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003), pp. 119–136;
C. Leathwood and P. O’Connell, ‘It’s a Struggle’: The Construction of the “New Student” in Higher Education’, Journal of Education Policy 18:6 (2003), pp. 597–615; Reay et al., Degrees of Choice.
C. Chapleo, The Effect of Fees on Higher Education Marketing in the UK. A Research Report (St Albans: Communications Management, 2013).
Cited in Roger Brown, ‘Competition and Choice in Undergraduate Education’, Council for the Defence of British Universities, 10 January 2014 (accessed at http://cdbu.org.uk/2014/01//2014/01/, 14 December 2014).
P. J. DiMaggio and W. W. Powell, ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’, American Sociological Review, 48:2 (1983), 147–160.
R. Brown and B. Bekhradnia, The Future Regulation of Higher Education in England (Oxford: Higher Education Policy Institute, 2013).
Roger Brown (ed.), Higher Education and the Market (New York and London: Routledge, 2011).
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Brown, R. (2015). Education beyond the Gove Legacy: The Case of Higher Education (1). In: Finn, M. (eds) The Gove Legacy: Education in Britain after the Coalition. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137491510_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137491510_6
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